Kotaku
EA's stab at the skateboarding genre, simply dubbed skate.—yes, with the period and lowercase initial S—was shown to the gaming press this week for an early look at how the game is progressing.
One of the first things you'll notice about the game is that it doesn't play, or look, like Activision's long-in-the-tooth Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series of games. There's less of a focus on massive combo stringing, complicated tricks, and the goal-defined level gameplay that Tony Hawk titles are known for.
With skate., the EA Black Box team has decided to focus on more fluid board control, greater realism and open-ended tasks. Players can choose to skate at their leisure around skate.'s photorealistic environments, mostly large public skate parks in the fictional city of San Vanelona, as well as take on tasks and challenges from other skaters and non-player characters populating the level. One such task was simply meeting a photographer's requirements: score 400 points and perform a rail slide from a heelflip. Fairly straightforward, but not altogether easy.
Why? The game's control scheme doesn't coddle you by using simple directional presses and button combinations. You'll have to work a little harder for those rail slides.
The controls are set up in a fashion familiar to anyone who's played an EA-published game (Fight Night Round 3, Def Jam ICON) recently. The left analog stick directs your player around the game world, the right stick controls your board. Using the trademarked "FlickIt" controls, a quick up-down motion with the right analog stick will kickflip your board. Move the analog stick in a J-motion, from top to down to left, and you'll pop shove-it. There are dozens of board moves that can be pulled off with simple gestures and they feel surprisingly effortless.
The rest of the controller is used for further body control. With the Xbox 360 controller, X and A perform left leg and right leg pushes, respectively, to gain speed. Right and left triggers will make your skater grab the board, depressing both will lay you down on the board for a coffin slide. Control feels natural, comfortable and refreshing in light of the white-knuckle button jamming you may be used to with Tony Hawk. What about the other buttons? B will act as a modifier for your tricks, with Y cycling through currently available tasks and challenges.
The skateboarding in skate. looks like mellow fun, and should give players an opportunity to cultivate their own style and suite of tricks.
One of the more interesting aspects of skate. is its planned use of the embedded video replay tool. The game will let players loop through the last 60 to 90 seconds of gameplay and record videos of memorable moments. Pull off an amazing set of tricks? Go into replay mode, edit out the fluff, pick your camera angles and save your video. EA will allow users to export these clips to your hard drive, then upload the fisheye lens-filtered videos to the skate. web site, letting other players rate and comment on your board skills. We were shown a preliminary version of the site, with movies uploaded on the fly, one that borrows heavily (and wisely) from YouTube.
The graphical style of skate. is gritty and realistic throughout, with real world brands like DC Shoes, Thrasher and Volcom driving home the realism. The HUD and overall design is rough and dirty, but thankfully features clear blue skies and realistic lighting. Expect in-game advertising to also add to the believability of the world. Graphically, the game looks fantastically realistic and you'll get a better impression of the visuals with the gallery below.
The most important aspect to nail with skate. has to be the controls. From my initial spins, the team seems to have done it. While more in-depth play will reveal just how usable the two stick control set up will be, it looks like they've got a worthy competitor to the Tony Hawk series of games. With the community aspect looking like a winner, skate. seems like it could be a solid new IP for Electronic Arts and may lure lapsed THPS players back the skateboarding genre.
Comments
I think if I want to get into all the complexity of learning skateing, I'll go grab my board. Buuuut, I can't hate what I havn't played yet, so we'll see.
i honestly can't wait for this. i have grown so tired of the over the top insane combo button mashing of the TPS series. this includes the SSX series as well. flashy nonstop antics are no substitute for subtle realism. please let this game be good.
please take out the period at the end of skate. . it really makes it hard to read a sentence.
It all looks really good except for that plastic skin. Aren't we in the next gen now? Why can't skin get reflectivity toned down just a touch?
I am one to believe the tony Hawk games never really evolved past #2, so I am greatly looking forward to this.
I preferred Thrasher Skate and Destroy over the first Tony Hawk, so I'm really looking forward to this game. When does it come out?
I just checked out a little video demonstrating the controlscheme, and it has definitely got me interested in this game. The Fight Night controls are very much fun and are definitely in the "easy to pick up, difficult to master" category, i hope that rubs off on this game well.
Also the look of it is very much more appealing to me, where as Tony Hawk feels like being inside a pinball machine (hud-wise, mostly).
I never cared for a tony hawk game past 2, which i used cheats to get everything in anyways. This looks really interesting though, I'd probably just screw around the whole time and never accomplish much of anything, having a good time all the while.
So you do tricks with the right stick.. And use B button as a trick modifier? How the crap does that work out? Guess we need to grow extra hands.
Otherwise, i'm pretty stoked about this game. I still bet EA is going to just freaking break it with EA Trax and rubbish online play though.
Can't wait for this. Half the time when I play the TH games I skate around and try to be at least mildly realistic with my trick selection, so this looks great. Like someone else mentioned, I was a fan of the Thrasher Skate and Destroy game since it was at least vaguely realistic, so I'm hoping this will take the realism formula and make it both challenging and yet fun to play.
When is this supposed to get released? Here's hoping for a demo!
Just looking at the video made me feel like it was going to be hell to control. People have trouble making Hadoukens.
sounds like it will get boring as soon as you master the tricks. skating games are fun because they're games, with lots of fun challanges and locations. if it's one city with no real different features, it won't be funf or long
im glad that they are going this route with the controls. after reading about this game a couple weeks back, my only worry was that they were going to borrow the thps control scheme. awesome that they're being innovative.
@xerxes7:
yeah, remember everyone, the new real is brown.
And I'm Indian.
YES!!!!!
r u realz?
Will skate. feature music by moe. ?
Ingame advertising to add to the realism?
Oh EA, how I deplore ye.
I like the way EA is going with this. Franchises like Tony Hawk were cool in an arcadey type of way, that being said I would love something more realistic. I hang out with a lot of skaters(not being one myself, I am more into the hip-hop thing) and it definetly isn't like what TH is doing. The control scheme seems more intuned with how a board actually handles. I hope the rich skating culture of Southern California is well portrayed as well.
This reminds me of Thrasher Skate and Destroy. More complicated controls to up the difficulty. I think some sort of motion sensing control for the Wii would be the real deal though. Imagine having a little tech deck thing you could just flip with your hands to do the tricks, now that would be sweet.
Looks fun, but a rent for me, or wait and buy a used copy. I personally Love Project 8, and it would be hard for me to get used to these new controls.
Kind of how it's hard for a DDR player like me to get used to Pump it up which has arrows in the corners and middle instead of up, left, right and bottom.
This looks terrible - as a skater I can say this does not look realistic at all. I would only get it for the skaters featured in it, who are all amazing.
hmm would be interesting to see a more realistic skate game...
You guys didn't play Tony Hawk past 2? Then you really missed out on the best one, Project 8, The separate analogs for controlling each foot was a super cool feature. Although I agree about the crazyness, it wasn't impossible to play realisticly. Infact that was the way I preffered to play just liesurely skating around hitting lines and doing realistic things that looked cool, thats why im looking forward to this game.
Looks pretty good to me...always had fun bashing around in the THPS games....can't be any worse than the last "installment" of that franchise.
@goonface: Haha as a skater you can say this does not look realistic at all? why does being a skater help qualify you to make that statement, it's not like everyone here doesn't know what the real world looks like and how people look skating at the park, or down the block. I think your mistaken when people are saying it looks realistic, because they mean it more in the way that it is the most realistic skating game made up to this point...maybe not as realistic as actually doing it.
I love how there isn't a "realistic" video game on the market, but people want to play this because of the "realism." I've said this before, if I wanted realism, I'd learn how to skate. I just want to have fun, and there's no damn way this will be as fun as a huge 8 player Hawk multiplayer game.
@Karlott: Is there multiplayer in this? or do we have to wait till skate. 8 to get that feature...because unless you've played this you can't really say if it would be as fun. I think this with 8 people skating slow in a pack, groovin, and hitting lines along side each other would be funner than tony fawk.
@Karlott: I think when people say they want 'realism' in a game, they don't mean they want to experience it EXACTLY the way it would be experienced in real life, because that would be pointless- like you said, just go learn to skate. The realism to be expected from games should reflect an experience as close as possible to the real thing, without the need for months of practice, injury, and frustration.
You ever tried skating? It's difficult, it hurts, and it takes hours (and then some) just to learn to ollie more than a couple of inches off the ground. I think this game looks rad, and I applaud the attempt to change things from the Tony Hawk style- although I do love TPS as well...
@Rockbot: Cause last I checked people don't air out of pools 20 feet, the physics are still gonna be bogus.
Upon further review of the photo...that is hujoungous air, I have seen airs like that in real life though not out of pools which that does kind of look like...that would be a major error on their part.
Can we please stop saying skate. with the period. on the. end of the. title? Sure, it's. The proper name. of the game, but. It's disorienting to. Read.
Maybe we can use "skate." in quotes, then.
I've liked skating games since Skate or Die. Kind of burnt out on them partway through American Wasteland, but this looks quite fun, and I want to see what EA produces for their inevitable WiiSkate game.
I have my doubts that EA can deliver a less MTVish experience than what the Tony Hawk series has degenerated into but so far the videos they have been releasing have looked pretty good. I do like how they appear to have toned down the crazy 8 different tricks all on a single air style that the Tony Hawk games have.
I would love to see a developer do a modern take on Skate Or Die 2 with a large and realistic sandbox style city, rival skaters, real skaterish goals (like raising money to buy supplies to build ramps, or more likely stealing them), getting hassled by the cops, no stupid campy storylines (would a bit of drama really hurt the genre?), and no "pro skaters" anywhere to be seen.
"Players can choose to skate at their leisure around skate.'s photorealistic environments, mostly large public skate parks in the fictional city of San Vanelona, as well as take on tasks and challenges from other skaters and non-player characters populating the level. One such task was simply meeting a photographer's requirements: score 400 points and perform a rail slide from a heelflip. Fairly straightforward, but not altogether easy."
That is exactly what you do in Tony Hawk. I'll be sticking with Tony Hawk because I don't want realism.
They think they're so cool making a game by skaters, for skaters. But video games are for gamers. You won't get the action and adventure with Skate that you can get with Tony Hawk, and you won't have as many combinations of tricks. EA should butt out and let Activision have the skating world. EA owns the NFL and should let Tony Hawk be.
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